Sestak for Senate: He has courage needed for independence

If your vote for our next U.S. senator is based on the one dimensional and scare-tactic portrayals of the candidates during this campaign the choices are fairly clear.

Vote for Republican Pat Toomey if you don’t want our senator to be a lock-step liberal who sits and waits to be told what to do by the Obama administration and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Or, vote for Democrat Joe Sestak if you don’t want someone representing Pennsylvania who is tied to Wall Street and cares only about the rich and little about the struggling middle class and the poor.

On looking deeper at their credentials, however, both candidates are smart, committed, principled and much more than the shameful campaign stereotypes portrayed in TV ads.

In the end, however, Toomey and Sestak have different views on the role of government in moving our country back to prosperity, how we should or should not stay involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, what path we need to take to ensure that we once again are able and willing to do great things, and how Congress should work as an institution to make sure we don’t find ourselves on the brink of an economic depression as we did just a couple of years ago.

It is in that context we support congressman Joe Sestak as our next U.S. senator.

Our nation is facing critical moments on many fronts: terrorism, the economy, the debt, education. If our better days as a country are still to come, we need people in Washington with the ability to not only make tough calls but be willing to work across the aisle to get things done.

Sestak brings an impressive resume to the position. He is a former three-star vice admiral in the U.S. Navy, is the highest-ranking former military officer now serving in Congress and commanded an entire aircraft battle group following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. He also has a master’s degree in public administration and a Ph.D. in political economy from Harvard. His reputation as a hard worker and superb analyst were factors in his being asked to create the Navy’s anti-terrorism unit and to serve on the National Security Council.

But more than that, he has a background deeply rooted in personal and institutional accountability, leadership, the belief in principled compromise and a common-sense approach to issues.

He understands the need to work in a bipartisan way in an effort to get our unsustainable government spending back under control, to provide incentives for job creation especially for small businesses and to make sure our country will continue to dominate the world stage. At the same time, however, he understands the vital role our federal government needs to play in making sure our country gets back on track.

Toomey, who had a voting record during his days in Congress that was more conservative than former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, makes an appealing case for his election with his call for less government, fewer regulations and lower taxes. He would likely also give Pennsylvania more clout in Washington if the GOP takes control of Congress after the upcoming election and because he is well respected by many Republicans nationwide.

But he is unwavering in his belief that most of our country’s problems would be solved if only government would get out of the way and leave things in the hands of private enterprise. He sometimes holds that belief even in the face of facts that say otherwise, or the knowledge that Pennsylvanians will be hurt when, for example, more good jobs move offshore. Without question we need as a country to encourage and support business growth, but imagine where our senior citizens would be now if their Social Security funds had been in the stock market a couple of years ago rather than guaranteed by the government.

Sestak and Toomey are fully committed to our soldiers and veterans. They each believe that you can’t send our men and women in harm’s way without giving them the resources they need on the battlefield and again when they return home. Sestak, however, has gone much further than being supportive of our troops. He has continually demanded clear benchmarks for success in our military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and metrics to measure them. He has complained when the Obama administration’s answers have been lacking.

He also is adamant about the need for a better articulated strategy and focus on combating the international terrorist group al-Qaida.

We often wish that Toomey and Sestak were more moderate and had views closer to the center. We believe it’s more likely that as a senator representing all Pennsylvanians, Sestak would move in that direction more than his opponent.

But speculation aside, in the end we were struck by the comments made by Adm. Vernon Clark, the former chief of navy operations about his then Vice Adm. Sestak.

“He was an incredible officer, the best I’ve ever seen,” Clark said. “Incredible moral courage, the courage to take the independent stand. When everybody else was saying, ‘This is what we ought to do’ he would stand up and say, ‘I don’t see it that way.’"

That is what we believe Washington needs right now if our country is going to remain the best and the envy of the entire world.